## Facts

- Kathleen Rose Harney married Joseph Michael Kruzel in 1971.
- Harney was a Milwaukee public school art teacher whose certification, employment, and professional activities used her birth surname, Harney.
- After marriage, she consistently continued using Harney and did not use Kruzel in ordinary affairs.
- The school board required her, for group insurance purposes, either to use her husband’s surname or to obtain a court order “legally” changing her surname to Harney.
- Harney petitioned under Wisconsin’s name-change statute to change her surname from Kruzel to Harney.
- At the hearing, the evidence showed she had never used Kruzel except in the petition itself; no one opposed the petition.
- The circuit judge denied the petition, reasoning that common-law custom and a divorce statute implied a wife assumes the husband’s surname upon marriage, and asserting different spousal surnames could be contrary to the best interests of future children.

## Issues

1. Whether Wisconsin law requires a woman, upon marriage, to assume her husband’s surname.
2. Whether the circuit court properly denied a name-change petition based on the assumption that the petitioner’s legal name became her husband’s surname upon marriage and on policy concerns about potential children.

## Decision

- The Wisconsin Supreme Court reversed the circuit court’s order and directed that the petition be granted.
- The court held that no law requires a married woman to take her husband’s surname.
- The court concluded that a woman adopts her husband’s surname only by customarily using it; if she continues using her premarital surname, her legal name does not change due to marriage.
- Because Harney never adopted “Kruzel” by usage, the circuit court’s premise that her legal name was Kruzel was incorrect, and speculative policy concerns about future children did not justify denial.

## Legal Principles

- At common law, a person may change a name without judicial process by adopting and using another name, so long as the change is not for fraudulent or illegal purposes.
- In Wisconsin, marriage alone does not change a woman’s legal surname; any postmarriage surname change depends on voluntary, customary usage.
- A statute permitting a divorced woman to “resume” her maiden name does not create an implied rule that marriage automatically and legally changes a woman’s surname to her husband’s.
- Name-change determinations should not rest on paternalistic or speculative assertions about family unity or future children absent a legal requirement.

## Conclusion

Wisconsin recognized that a married woman’s legal surname is governed by voluntary, nonfraudulent usage rather than automatic operation of law, and it rejected the view that marriage compels adoption of the husband’s surname or that predicted effects on future children justify denying recognition of the name the person has consistently used.


Kruzel v. Podell, 67 Wis. 2d 138, 226 N.W.2d 458 (Wis. 1975)